The Glass Village

Two...

He was plastered against the flimsy wall with his eye to the hole in the freezing dark righting off the stench from the alley and saying don’t don’t don’t he’s only a kid from Oklahoma who ought to be kissing his date in a jalopy under a willow by some moonlit river but they went on jamming lighted cigarets against his nipples and other places and telling him to say what he’d dropped from his plane on their people’s villages and the hole in the wall got bigger and bigger and bigger until the hole was the whole room and he was the kid flyer twisting and jerking like a trout on a line to get away from the little probing fires the fires the fires...

Johnny opened his eyes.

He was in a sweat and the room was black.

“Who is it?” he said.

“Me,” said the Judge’s voice. The old man’s finger was poking holes in him. “For a restless sleeper you’re sure hard to wake up. Get up, Johnny!”

“What time is it?”

“Almost five. That’s a three-mile walk to the pond, and the big ones bite early.”

They hiked up Shinn Road in the dawn with their fishing gear and a camping outfit, the Judge insisting they make a day of it. Or as much of a day as the threatening skies would allow.

“When a man gets to be as old as I am,” observed the Judge, “half a day is better than none.”

Each carried a gun, taken from a locked commode drawer in the Judge’s bedroom, where the weapons lay wrapped in oily rags among boxes of ammunition. The old jurist frowned on hunting for sport; he had his property severely posted to protect the pheasant and deer. But he considered chuck, rabbit, and such pests fair game. “When the fishing runs out we’ll go after some. They’re thick up around there. Come down into the valley and play hob with the farms. Maybe we’ll get a bead on some fox. They’ve done a lot of damage this year.” He had issued to Johnny a 20-gauge double for the rabbits, reserving to himself what he called his “varmint rifle.” It was a .22 caliber handloader designed to play a little hob of its own, the Judge said ferociously, with the damn woodchucks. And he sighed, wishing old Pokey were trotting along to heel. Pocahontas had been the Judge’s last hunting dog, a red setter bitch whose tenderly framed photograph hung on his study wall. Johnny had seen her grave in the woods behind the garage.

“Pokey and I had some fine times in the woods,” Judge Shinn said happily.

“Hunting the butterflies, no doubt,” grinned Johnny.

The Judge flushed and mumbled something about all that foolishness being dead and buried.

So the day began peacefully, nothing marring their pleasure but the closing sky. They netted some peepers for live bait and went out in the old flatbottomed boat the Judge had had carted up to the pond the week before, and they fished for largemouthed bass and were successful beyond their dreams. Then they hauled the boat up on shore and did some steel-rod casting for pickerel, and they caught not only pickerel in plenty but a couple of husky trout, at which the Judge declared gleefully the coming of the millennium, for Peepers Pond had been considered fished out of trout, he said, for years.

“Did I croak some twaddle yesterday about premonitions?” he chortled. “False prophet!”

Then they made camp on the edge of the pond, broiled their trout and swallowed the delectable flesh along with their pond-cooled beer and Millie Pangman’s oatmeal bread, and Johnny brewed he-man’s coffee while the Judge cut open the ambrosial currant pie Aunt Fanny Adams had sent over by little Cynthia Hackett the evening before; and they stuffed themselves and were in heaven.

Whereupon the Judge said drowsily, “Don’t feel a bit like snuffing out life. Hang the chucks,” and he spread his poncho and dropped off like a small boy after a picnic.

So Johnny lay down and did likewise, hoping this time he wouldn’t dream the one about the ten thousand men in yellow blanket-uniforms all shooting at him with the Russian guns in their yellow hands.

And that was how the rain caught them, two innocents fast asleep and soaked to the skin before they could scramble to their feet.

“I’m running true to form,” gasped Johnny. “Did I ever tell you I’m a jinx?”

It was a few seconds past two o’clock by the Judge’s watch, and they huddled under a big beech peering at the sky and trying to determine its long range intentions. The woods about the pond crackled and trembled under lightning bolts; one struck not a hundred feet away.

“Rather be drowned on the road than electrocuted under a tree,” shouted the Judge. “Let’s get out of here!”

They turned the boat over, hastily gathered their gear, and ran for the road.

They pushed against a curtain of water, squishing along heads down at a steady pace. At two-thirty by the Judge’s watch they were half a mile from the crest of Holy Hill.

“We’re not doing bad!” roared the old man. “We’ve come about halfway. How d’ye feel, Johnny?”

“Reminiscent!” said Johnny. He never wanted to see another fish. “Isn’t there any traffic on this road?”

“Let us pray!”

“Keep your weather eye peeled for anything on wheels. A scooter would look good just now!”

Five minutes later a figure swam into view on the opposite side of the road, heading in the direction from which they had come and leaning into the rain.

“Hi, there!” yelled Johnny. “Enjoying the swim?”

The man leaped like a deer. For a moment he glared in their direction, the width of the road between them. They saw a medium-sized man of spare build with a face dark gray as the skies, a stubble of light beard, and two timid, burning eyes. The rain had fluted the brim of his odd green hat and was coursing down his face in rivers; patched black pants plastered his shanks and the light tweed jacket with its leather elbow patches hung on his body like a wet paper sack. He carried a small black suitcase, the size of an overnight bag, made of some cheap material which was dissolving at the seams — a rope held it together... For a moment only; then, in a lightning flash, water squirting out of his shapeless shoes, the man ran.

Soaked as they were, Johnny and the Judge stared up the road after the running man.

“Wonder who he is,” said the Judge. “Stranger around here.”

“Never look a stranger in the mouth,” said Johnny.

But the Judge kept staring.

“Foreigner, I’d say,” shrugged Johnny. “Or of recent foreign origin. He never got that green velour hat in the U.S.A.”

“Probably some itinerant heading for Cudbury and a mill job. Why do you suppose he ran like that, Johnny?”

“Sudden memories of the old country and the People’s Police, no doubt. Two armed men.”

“Good Lord!” The Judge shifted his rifle self-consciously. “I hope the poor devil gets a lift.”

“Hope for yourself, Judge. And while you’re at it, put in a good word for me!”

A minute or so later a gray shabby sedan bore down on them from behind, shedding water like a motorboat. They turned and shouted, but it was going over forty miles an hour and before they could half open their mouths it was past them and out of sight over the hill. They stood in the slap of its wake, dejected.

“That was Burney Hackett’s car,” growled the Judge. “Darn his chinless hide! He never even saw us.”

“Courage, your honor. Only a mile or so more to go.”

“We could stop in at Hosey Lemmon’s shack,” said the Judge doubtfully. “It’s at the top of the hill there, in the woods off the road.”

“No, thanks, I filled my quota of filthy shacks long ago. I’ll settle for your house and a clean towel.”

As they reached the top of Holy Hill, the Judge exclaimed, “There’s old Lemmon now, footing it for home.”

“Another pioneer,” grumbled Johnny. “Doesn’t he have a car, or a buggy, or a tricycle, either?”

“Hosey? Heavens, no.” Judge Shinn frowned. “What’s he doing back up here? He’s hired out to the Scotts.”

“Prefers high ground, of course!”

The Judge bellowed at the white-bearded hermit, but if Lemmon heard the hail he paid no attention to it. He disappeared in his hut, a ramshackle cabin with a torn tar-paper roof and a rusty stovepipe for a chimney.

Nothing human or mechanical passed them again. They fell into the Judge’s house at three o’clock like shipwrecked sailors on a providential beach, stripped and showered and got into clean dry clothes as if the devil were after them; and at three-fifteen, just as they were sitting down in the Judge’s living room with a glass of brown comfort and rags to clean the guns, the phone rang twice and the Judge sighed and said, “Now I don’t consider that neighborly,” and he answered the phone and Burney Hackett’s nasal voice, more nasal and less lucid than the Judge had ever heard it, announced with total unbelief that he had just walked over to the Adams house and found Aunt Fanny Adams stretched out on the floor of her paintin’ room deader than a shucked corn.

“Aunt Fanny?” said Judge Shinn. “Did you say, Burney, Fanny Adams is dead?”

Johnny put his glass down.

The Judge hung up and blindly turned in his direction.

“Heart?” said Johnny, wishing he could look elsewhere.

“Brains.” The Judge groped. “Where’s my gun? Brains, Burney Hackett says. They’re spilled all down her smock. Where’s my gun!”

They splashed up the path of the Adams house to the front door, which resisted. Judge Shinn rattled the brass knocker, pounded.

“Burney! It’s me, Lewis Shinn!”

“I locked it, Judge,” said Burney Hackett’s voice. “Come around the side to the kitchen door.”

They raced around to the east side of the house. The kitchen door was open to the rain. In the doorway stood Constable Hackett, very pale, with a yellow undertinge. The cold water was running in the sink near the door, as if he had just been using it. He reached over and turned off the tap and said, “Come on in.”

A puddle of muddy water lay inside the doorway. The muddy tracks of Hackett’s big feet were all over the satiny inlaid linoleum.

It was a small modern kitchen, with an electric range and a big refrigerator and a garbage disposal unit in the sink. On the kitchen table stood a platter of half-eaten food, boiled ham and potato salad, a dish of berry pie, a pitcher of milk and a clean glass.

There was a swinging door on the wall opposite the outer door, and the Judge went to it slowly.

“Let me,” said Johnny. “I’m used to it.”

“No.”

The old man pushed the door aside. He made no sound at all for a long time. Then he cleared his throat and stepped into the inner room, and Johnny stepped in after him. Behind Johnny the telephone on the kitchen table rattled as Constable Hackett asked fretfully for a number.

The studio was almost square. Its two outside walls faced north and west and were all glass, with a view of Merton Isbel’s cornfield to the north and, on the west beyond the stone wall, the church and cemetery. The cornfield stretched to the flat horizon.

She looked small lying on the floor, little more than a bundle of dry bones covered by a smeared smock, the rivulets of blood in the wrinkles already turning to the color of mud, the single exposed hand with its wavery blue veins — like a relief map of its ninety-one years — still grasping the paintbrush as if that, at least, could not be taken from her. The hand lay old and shriveled, at peace. On the easel behind her stood a painting. The palette she had been working with daubed the floorboards gaily under the north window, where it had fallen.

Johnny went back into the kitchen. He yanked a clean huck towel from a rack above the sink and returned to the studio. Burney Hackett put down the phone and followed.

Johnny covered the head and face gently.

“Two-thirteen,” said the Judge. “Remember the time. Remember it.” He turned to the blackened fireplace on the wall opposite the north picture window and pretended to be studying it.

Johnny squatted. The weapon was on the floor almost within her reach. It was a long heavy poker of black iron, fire-pocked and crusted with the smoke of generations. The blood on it was already dry.

“Does this poker come from the fireplace?” Johnny asked.

“Yes,” said the Judge’s back. “Yes, it does. It was made by her grandfather, Thomas Adams, in a hand-forge that once stood on this property. The past, she couldn’t get away from the past even in death.”

Who can? thought Johnny.

“Even this room. It was originally the kitchen and it’s as old as the house. When Girshom died and she began to paint she blocked off the east end for a small modern kitchen and turned the balance into a studio. Knocked out the north and west walls for light, had a new floor laid, supply cabinets built... But she left the old fireplace. Said she couldn’t live without it.” Judge Shinn laughed. “Instead, it killed her.”

“Two-thirteen,” said Burney Hackett.

“I know, Constable,” Johnny said softly. “You didn’t touch the locket?”

“Nope.” Hackett’s tone was stiff.

The oldfashioned locket-watch on its gold chain that Johnny had noticed Fanny Adams wearing the previous day was still around her neck. It had died, too. One wild, mad blow had missed her head and scraped down the front of her, smashing the cameo and springing the locket-face, so that the face stood open and the cracked and silenced dial with its delicate roman numerals fixed the moment of eternity. Two-thirteen, it said. Thirteen minutes past the second hour of the afternoon of Saturday, July the fifth. The sooty streak left by the tip of the poker on the battered watch case was as definite as a crossmark on a calendar.

Johnny rose.

“How did you find her, Burney?” Judge Shinn had turned back now, his long Yankee face hardened against the world, or perhaps himself.

Hackett said: “I been after Aunt Fanny for a long time to buy herself adequate p’tection for her pictures. Lyman Hinchley’d wrote her up for fire insurance on the house and furnishin’s, but not near enough to cover all them paintin’s she’s got around. Most a hundred in that slidin’ closet, worth a fortune.

“Well, yesterday at the party I fin’ly talked her into lettin’ me cover the market value of the pictures. So today I ran over to Cudbury to see Lyman Hinchley ’bout an up-to-date comprehensive policy plan, and I got all the figgers and come back here to put ’em to her. That’s when I found her layin’ here like you see.”

“What time was that, Burney?”

“’Bout a minute or two before I phoned you, Judge.”

“We’d better call the coroner in Cudbury.”

“No need to call him,” said Burney Hackett quickly. “I already phoned Doc Cushman in Comfort while I was waitin’ for you to get here.”

“But Cushman’s merely the coroner’s deputy for Comfort, Burney,” said Judge Shinn patiently. “This is a criminal death, directly in the county coroner’s jurisdiction. Cushman will merely have to call Barnwell in Cudbury.”

“Cushman ain’t callin’ nobody,” said Hackett. “I didn’t tell him nothin’ but to get over here right away.”

“Why not, for heaven’s sake?” The Judge was exasperated.

“Just didn’t have a mind to.” The underdeveloped chin suddenly jutted.

Judge Shinn stared at him. As he stared, a wailing scream began that grew and grew until it filled the house.

It was the village fire siren.

“Who set that off?”

“I just phoned Peter Berry to send Calvin Waters over to the firehouse and start it goin’. That’ll bring everybody in.”

“It certainly will!” The Judge turned abruptly to the kitchen door. “Excuse me, Burney...” The chinless man did not budge. “Burney, get out of my way. I have to phone the state police, the sheriff—”

“Won’t be necessary, Judge,” said Hackett.

“You’ve already called?”

“Nope.”

“Burn Hackett, don’t fuddle me,” exclaimed the Judge. “I’m not exactly myself just now. This is a murder case. The proper authorities—”

“I’m the proper authority in Shinn Corners, Judge,” said Burney Hackett, “now, ain’t I? Duly elected constable. The law states I may call the county sheriff to my aid, when necessary. Well, it ain’t necessary. Soon’s my posse forms, we go huntin’.”

“But the summoning of a posse comitatus is the function of—” Judge Shinn stopped. “Hunting? For whom, Burney? What are you holding back?”

Hackett blinked. “Not holdin’ nothin’ back, Judge. Ain’t had a chance. Prue Plummer phoned me here soon’s I hung up after talkin’ to you. Says she mistook your two rings for her three. As usual. Anyways, she listened in. Well, Prue had somethin’ to tell me before she began phonin’ the news around the Corners. A tramp stopped at her back door ’bout a quarter of two today, she says. Dang’rous-lookin’ furriner, spoke a broken English. She couldn’t hardly understand him, Prue says, but she figgered he was after a handout. She sent him packin’. But here’s the thing.” Hackett cleared his throat. “Prue says she watched this tramp walk up Shinn Road and go round Aunt Fanny’s to the back.”

“Tramp?” said the Judge.

He glanced at Johnny’s back. Johnny was looking out the north window at Aunt Fanny Adams’s barn and lean-to and the Isbel cornfield beyond.

“Tramp,” nodded Constable Hackett. “There’s nobody in Shinn Corners’d beat in the head of Aunt Fanny Adams. You know that, Judge. It was that tramp murdered her, and it’s a cinch he can’t have got far on foot in this pourin’-down rain.”

“Tramp,” the Judge said again.

The siren shut off in mid-scream, leaving a shimmer of silence. Then there was confusion in the garden and the road. The swishy movement of feet in the kitchen, the creak of the swinging door, a wedge of eyes.

Judge Shinn suddenly pushed the door in and he and Burney Hackett went into the kitchen. Johnny heard angry female murmurs and the old man saying something in a neighborly voice.

The rain was still driving hard in crowded slanting silver lines, putting up a screen beyond the window through which the cornfield wavered. Water was pouring off the Adams barn in the back yard and the pitched roof of the small lean-to attached to it, a two-sided affair open at the front and rear. Johnny could see through to the stone wall of the Isbel field as if the lean-to were a picture frame.

He turned back to the painting on the easel.

She had caught in her primitive, meticulous style all the raging contempt of nature. The dripping barn, the empty lean-to, every stone in the wall, every tall tan withered stalk in the rain-lashed Isbel field, every crooked weeping headstone in the cemetery corner, cowered under the ripped and bleeding sky.

And Johnny looked down at the crumpled bones, and he remembered the dark gray face, the timid, burning eyes, the green velour hat, the rope-tied satchel, the spurting shoes as their feet fled in the downpour... and he thought, You were a very great artist, and a beautiful old woman, and there’s no more sense in your death than in my life.

Then the Judge and Samuel Sheare came in with a staring man between them, and the Judge said in the gentlest of voices, I’m sorry, Ferriss, that death had to come to her this way; and the man shut his eyes and turned away.

When Mr. Sheare said in his troubled way, “We must not, we must not prejudge. Our Lord was poorest of the poor. Are we to lay this crime on the head of a man merely ’cause he must ask for food and walk in the rain?” — when the minister said this, Fanny Adams’s grandnephew raised his head and said, “Walk in the rain? Who?”

They had taken him out of the studio into Fanny Adams’s gleaming dining room, and Prue Plummer was there with Elizabeth Sheare, stroking the pin butterfly hinge on the door from the death room with patient avarice. But Ferriss Adams’s question brought her mouth to a point, and Prue Plummer told him avidly about the man who had begged for food at her back door.

“I saw a tramp,” Adams said.

“Where?” asked Constable Hackett.

Mr. Sheare said suddenly, “I ask you to remember that you’re Christians. I’m stayin’ with the body,” and he went into the studio. His stout wife sat down in a corner.

“I saw the tramp!” said Adams, his voice rising. He was a tall dapper businessman with thinning brown hair and close-shaven cheeks that had grown pink and blotchy. “I was on my way over from Cudbury just now to call on Aunt Fanny and I passed a man on the road... Miss Plummer, what did this tramp look like?”

“Had on dark pants,” said Prue Plummer, making a smacking sound, “and a light sort of old tweed jacket, and he was carrying a cheap suitcase tied with a rope.”

“That’s the man! It was just a few minutes ago! What time is it? He’s still up there somewhere!”

“Take it easy, Mr. Adams,” said Burney Hackett. “Where’d you see this feller?”

“I got here just about three-thirty — I passed him only a few minutes before that,” cried Adams. “It was on the other side of Peepers Pond, the Cudbury side, about three-quarters of a mile beyond it, I’d say. He was headed towards Cudbury. Thought he acted queer! Jumped into the bushes when he saw my car coming.”

“Less’n four miles from here, it’s three thirty-five... say you passed him ten-twelve minutes ago...” Hackett thought deliberately. “Can’t have got much more’n half a mile past where you saw him. Your car’s outside here, Mr. Adams, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I got to stay here, get my posse together and make sure everybody keeps his mouth shut. Judge, I’m deputizin’ you and Mr. Shinn and Mr. Adams to start out after that tramp. He’s likely dang’rous, but you got two guns. Don’t use ’em ’less you have to, but take no chances, neither. Got enough gas in your tank, Mr. Adams?”

“Gassed up this morning, thank God.”

“Don’t figger we’ll be more’n five-ten minutes behind you,” said Constable Hackett. “Good huntin’.”

And then they were in Ferriss Adams’s old coupé, rattling furiously up the hill in the rain, Johnny and the Judge bouncing around in the jump-seats clutching their guns.

“I hope this windshield wiper holds out,” said Adams anxiously. “Do you suppose he’s armed?”

“Don’t worry, Ferriss,” said the Judge. “We have a manhunter with us. Fresh from the wars.”

“Mr. Shinn? Oh, Korea. Ever kill anybody, Mr. Shinn?”

“Yes,” said Johnny.

They knew it was the same man the moment they saw him. He was slogging along the streaming road at a fast shuffle, the roped satchel bumping off his knees as he shifted its weight from one hand to the other, the absurd velour hat a cloche now clinging to his ears. He kept glancing over his shoulder.

“That’s him!” yelled Ferriss Adams. He stuck his head out of the car, squawking his horn. “Stop! In the name of the law, stop right there!”

The man dived off the road to his right and disappeared.

“He’s escaping!” screamed the lawyer. “Shoot, Mr. Shinn!”

“Yes, sir,” said Johnny, not moving. It was hard to keep her shattered head in focus; already she was part of his dreamworld. All he could see was a live man, running to stay alive.

“Shoot where, you idiot?” cried Judge Shinn. “Ferriss, stop the car. You can’t drive into that muck. It’s swamp!”

“He’s not getting away from me,” grunted Adams, struggling with the wheel. “Say, isn’t that a wagon road? Maybe—”

“Don’t be a fool, man,” roared the Judge. “How far will we get?”

But Ferriss Adams’s coupé had already plunged into the marsh, its wheels whining for traction.

They slipped and skidded after the fleeing man. He had been forced onto the path; apparently a few seconds of floundering in swampwater up to his knees had made the road with its mere five inches of mud seem like a running track. He ran stooped over, dodging, weaving, ducking, as if he expected bullets. The satchel was under his arm now.

They were in the marsh area about four and a half miles northeast of Shinn Corners, well beyond Peepers Pond. It was posted with county signs warning against dangerous bogs, and the heavy rain of almost two hours had not added to its charms. Now a rolling mist closed in that made Adams curse.

“We’ll lose him altogether in this pea soup! We’ll have to chase him on foot—”

“Wait, Ferriss.” The Judge was peering ahead, fingering his gun nervously. “Watch it! Stop the car!”

The brakes shrieked. The coupé skidded to a halt. Adams jumped out, looking ahead wildly.

The car had stopped on the brink of a soft black stretch of the marsh. Adams picked up a heavy rock and lobbed it into the stuff. The rock sank out of sight immediately. The surface of the muck quivered as if it were alive.

“Quagmire.” Adams cursed again. “We’ve lost him.”

The rain bounced off them. Each man stood in a nimbus of spray, peering.

“He can’t have got far,” said Johnny.

“There he is!” cried Adams. “Stop! Stop, or we shoot!”

The fugitive was wading frantically through the knee-deep morass forty yards away.

“Mr. Shinn — Judge — shoot, or give me a gun—”

Johnny pushed the excited man aside. The Judge was looking at him curiously.

“Stop,” called Johnny. “Stop, and you won’t be hurt.”

The man pressed on in a violent splash of arms and legs.

“Why don’t you shoot?” Adams shook his fist at Johnny.

Johnny raised the 20-gauge and fired. At the roar of the gun the fugitive leaped convulsively and fell.

“You hit him, you hit him!” shrieked the Cudbury lawyer.

“I fired over his head,” said Johnny. “Stay right there!” he called.

“Scared witless,” said the Judge. “There he goes!”

The man bounded to his feet, glared about him. He had lost his suitcase, his hat. He crouched and scuttled behind a big swamp oak. By the time they reached the tree he had vanished.

They kept together, calling, occasionally firing a shot into the air. But the tramp was gone as if the bog had caught him.

Eventually they struggled back to the wagon road.

“You should have put a bullet in his leg,” Ferriss Adams was saying heatedly. “I’d have done it if I had a gun!”

“Then I’m glad you don’t, Ferriss,” said the Judge. “He won’t get away.”

“He’s got away, hasn’t he?”

“Not for long, I warrant you. If he sticks to the swamp, he’s bottled up. If he takes to the main road, he’ll be caught in a matter of minutes. Burney Hackett and the others should be along any time now. What is it, Johnny?”

Johnny touched the Judge’s elbow. “Look.”

They were back at the dead end of the wagon road. Adams’s coupé no longer stood on the brink of the bog. It was settling into the quagmire. As they watched, it stopped.

All but a foot of its top had been sucked under.

“My car,” said Ferriss Adams dazedly.

Johnny pointed to a series of deep narrow oval holes in the mud midway between the tracks of the car, ending at the edge of the bog.

“His tracks. He released the brake, put his shoulder to the rear end, and pushed the car in. He’d probably doubled back, seen the coupé, and decided he had a better chance of escape if we were forced to foot it, too. Tough luck, Mr. Adams.”

The Judge said, “I’m sorry, Ferriss. We’d better get back to the main road and wait for the other cars.”

“Give me your gun!” said the lawyer.

“No, Ferriss. We want this man alive, and pushing a car into a bog doesn’t call for the death penalty.”

“He’s a killer, Judge!”

“We don’t know that. All we know is that he was seen going around to the kitchen door of your aunt’s house some twenty minutes or so before she was murdered.”

“That proves it, doesn’t it?” snarled Adams.

“You’re a lawyer, Ferriss. You know it proves no such thing.”

“I know I’m going to get that murdering hobo dead or alive!”

“You’re wasting time,” said Johnny. “He’ll risk the main road again, now that we have no car. We’d better get moving.”

They hurried back along the wagon road in the mire, Ferriss Adams laboring ahead in white-faced silence. Johnny and the Judge did not look at each other.

Suddenly they heard a burble of voices, scuffling sounds, a man’s laugh. Adams broke into a run.

“They got him!”

They burst out into the blacktop road. Hubert Hemus’s sedan and Orville Pangman’s farm truck were blocking the road. The fugitive was down on his back at the bottom of a pile of flailing arms and legs — the big Hemus twins, Eddie Pangman, Joel Hackett, and Drakeley Scott. Forming a tight gun circle around the boys were Hubert Hemus, Constable Hackett, Orville Pangman, old Merton Isbel, and fat Peter Berry. As the three men pushed through, the pile-up dissolved and the Hemus boys hauled their quarry to his feet. They slammed him against the side of Orville Pangman’s truck.

Eddie Pangman said hoarsely, “Get your lousy hands over your head.” He rammed the muzzle of his rifle into the man’s belly. The quivering arms went up.

Tommy Hemus grinned and kicked him in the groin. He fell down with a scream, clawing at his middle. Dave Hemus picked him up and pinned him against the truck again. His legs jerked in spasms of effort to raise them.

Johnny Shinn felt something stir deep, deep inside. It was the small cold hard core of an anger he thought he had lost forever. It slowly spread to take in the old woman’s head, as if her shattered head and the fugitive’s twitching legs were part of the same violated body.

He felt the Judge’s hand on his arm and looked down with surprise. His finger was on the trigger of the shotgun and the gun was coming up to Tommy Hemus’s belt buckle.

Johnny hastily lowered the gun.

The dripping, muddy, blood-caked, gasping man was hardly recognizable as the itinerant Johnny and the Judge had passed on the road in the downpour earlier in the day. Dirty blond hair hung over his eyes; his jacket and pants were torn in a dozen places; thorns had ripped his hands and face; blood oozed from his mouth were a tooth had been kicked out. His eyes kept rolling like the eyes of a frightened dog.

“You flushed the bastard right out to us,” said Burney Hackett.

“Saw your tracks where ye turned into the ma’sh,” said burly Orville Pangman, “then heard your guns.”

“We spread out along the road and ambushed him,” panted Peter Berry. “Real excitin’.”

Old Merton Isbel said: “Scum. Dirty whore scum.”

Eddie Pangman, great red boy-hands opening and closing on his rifle: “Put the cuffs on him, Mr. Hackett!”

“Aw, Pop don’t have no cuffs,” said stocky Joel Hackett disgustedly. “Didn’t I always say you ought to get cuffs, Pop? Cop’s got to have at least one pair, anybody knows that.”

“You mind your tongue,” said Constable Hackett.

“Cops without cuffs...”

Tommy Hemus drawled: “He ain’t goin’ no place.”

Dave Hemus, sucking on a torn knuckle: “Not any more he ain’t.”

Hubert Hemus, to his sons: “Shut up.”

Drakeley Scott said nothing. The thin-shouldered boy was staring at the jerking fugitive with heat, almost with hunger.

‘Was he armed?” asked Judge Shinn.

“No,” said Constable Hackett. “I kind of wish he was.”

Ferriss Adams walked up to the man and looked him over. “Has he talked?” he asked harshly.

“Jabbered some,” said Peter Berry. “Try him, Mr. Adams.”

“You killed her, didn’t you?” said Ferriss Adams.

The man said nothing.

“Didn’t you?” shouted the lawyer. “Can’t you talk, damn you? All it needs is a yes or no!”

The eyes merely kept rolling.

“Ferriss,” said Judge Shinn.

Adams sucked in some air and stepped back. “Also,” he said coldly, “you went and pushed my car into the bog. How am I going to get it out? Won’t you talk about that, either?”

“Car in the bog?” said Peter Berry alertly. “Now that’s a darn shame, Mr. Adams. S’pose I take a look—”

“Not now,” said Hube Hemus. The slight man had not moved. “Burney, put the halter on him.”

“Wait!” said the Judge. “What are you going to do?”

“Got to secure the prisoner, Judge, don’t we?” said the constable. “Brought along a calf halter. It ought to just fit.” Hackett slipped a muddy halter over the fugitive’s head. The man dropped to his knees. His eyes rolled back so far only the whites showed.

“He thinks he’s going to be hanged or shot,” exclaimed Judge Shinn. “Can’t you see this man is in the last stages of fright? Not to mention pain! Take this nasty thing off him, Burney.”

“Ain’t nobody goin’ to hurt him, Judge.” The constable tightened the neck-strap and buckled it. “Nobody’s goin’ to shoot you, killer. Not for a while, anyway.” He snapped a lead-rope to the ring of the halter. “There we are. Try gettin’ out of that.”

The nose-piece of the halter gave the man a ridiculous animal appearance. It seemed to annoy him. His torn hands tugged at it violently.

“Better tie his hands, too,” said Hube Hemus. “Dave, Tommy, hang on to him. Anybody got another rope?”

“There’s some rope under the seat of the truck, Eddie,” Orville Pangman said to his son.

The Hemus twins took hold of the man’s arms, one pulling one way, one another. The man stopped struggling. Eddie Pangman scrambled off the truck with a length of tarred rope. His father took it from him. The twins slammed the prisoner’s wrists together behind his back and the big farmer trussed them.

Judge Shinn stepped forward.

“Now he’s all right, Judge,” said the elder Hemus politely. “Orville, I’ll take him in my car with Tommy and Dave. He might get a notion to jump out of an open truck. Burney, get him on his feet.”

“Come on, get up.” Hackett pulled on the rope. The kneeling figure resisted. “Nobody’s goin’ to do nothin’ to you. Up on your pins!”

“Would you mind waiting a minute, Hackett?” Johnny heard his voice say.

They stared at him.

Johnny went over to the cowering man, wondering at his own energy. He was beginning to get a headache. “Miss Plummer said this man talked in a foreign accent. Maybe he doesn’t understand English too well.” He stooped over the prisoner. “Do you know what I’m saying?”

Bruised lips moving; the eyes were closed.

“What was that?” Johnny asked him.

The lips kept moving.

Johnny straightened. “Sounds like Russian, or Polish.”

“Told you he jabbered!” said Peter Berry triumphantly.

“Commie spy, I bet,” grinned Tommy Hemus.

“What’s he saying?” demanded Joel Hackett. “Huh, Mr. Shinn?”

“My guess is,” said Johnny, “he’s praying.”

“Then he can’t be a Commie,” said Eddie Pangman. “They don’t pray.”

“That’s right,” said Dave Hemus. “Them bastards don’t believe in God.”

“Some of ’em do,” said Drakeley Scott unexpectedly. “They got churches in Russia.”

“Don’t you believe it,” sneered Joel Hackett. “That’s a lot of Red propaganda.”

“What’s the matter, Drake,” said Tommy Hemus, “you a Commie-lover?”

“You shut your damn mouth!” The Scott boy doubled his thin fists.

“All o’ ye shut your mouths,” said Merton Isbel. He walked up to the kneeling man and deliberately measured the distance between the toe of his heavy farm shoe and a point midway between the prisoner’s thighs. “Git up, ye godless furrin whoreson. Git up!”

He let fly.

The man fell forward on his face and lay still.

Judge Shinn’s blue eyes flashed at Johnny with a sort of contempt. Then he went up to Merton Isbel and struck him a heavy blow on the shoulder with the heel of his hand. The old farmer staggered, his mouth wide open with astonishment.

“Now you men listen to me,” said the Judge in a throbbing whisper. “This man is a prisoner. He’s suspected of murder. Suspicion isn’t proof. But even if we knew he was guilty, he’d still have his rights under the law. I will personally swear out a warrant for the arrest of anyone who manhandles him or harms him in any way. Is that clearly understood?” He looked at Constable Hackett. “And since you make so much of your constabulary office, Burney Hackett, I’m holding you responsible for the safety of the prisoner.”

The chinless man said soothingly, “Sure, Judge. I’ll go right along with him in the Hemuses’ car.”

The old jurist stared around at his neighbors. They returned his stare without expression. His lips flattened and he stepped aside, shifting his rifle slightly.

“Boys.” The First Selectman of Shinn Corners nodded toward the fallen man.

The Hemus twins bent over the prisoner, hooked his armpits, and lifted.

He was only half-conscious. The dark gray of his skin had a greenish tinge. His face was a twist of pain.

His legs refused to straighten. They kept making weak attempts to come up tight against his belly.

Tommy Hemus winked. “Now this ain’t manhandlin’, Judge Shinn, is it? You see he won’t walk.” And the brothers dragged the prisoner to their father’s car, his shoetips scraping on the road. Constable Hackett cradled his gun and followed. Hube Hemus was already behind the wheel, looking impatient.

Hackett pulled open one of the rear doors.

“Upsadaisy,” said Tommy Hemus pleasantly. He and his brother heaved, and the fugitive tumbled into the car head first.

The car immediately began to back up. Hemus’s sons jumped in with the prisoner, grinning; Hackett yelped and scrambled in beside their father.

The car was fifty feet down the road before the doors slammed.

“I’m sorry, Judge,” said Johnny in a low voice. “But I’ve either got to go berserk or mind my business.” Judge Shinn said nothing. “I wish I hadn’t met her!” said Johnny.

Orville Pangman was climbing into the cab of his open truck. The other men were pulling themselves up over the tailboard.

“Better ride up here with me, Judge,” called Pangman as he kicked his starter. “Ye’ll get jounced around back there.”

“I’ll ride with the others, Orville,” said the Judge quietly.

Eddie Pangman vaulted in beside his father.

Johnny helped the old man onto the truck in silence. He was about to follow when the truck shot backward; he was almost hurled under the wheels. He clung to the tailboard chain, dragging; if not for the helping hands of the Judge and Ferriss Adams he would have been torn loose. The others looked on curiously, not stirring.

His head ached abominably.

All the way back to Shinn Corners the Cudbury lawyer complained about his sunken car, trying to get a salvage price out of Peter Berry. The rain dripped off his nose bitterly. The storekeeper kept shaking his head and saying in his boomy-smily voice that he couldn’t set a price beforehand, didn’t know how long the job would take, it was a question if his old wrecker had the power to pull a car out that was almost completely buried in bog, though of course he’d be glad to give it a try. Likely need a dredger, too. Might be a mite expensive. If Mr. Adams wanted him to tackle it on a contingency basis... “’Course, you could always get ’Lias Wurley from over Cudbury to come way out here, Mr. Adams, but Wurley’s a high-priced garage...”

In the end Adams threw up his hands. “Couldn’t possibly be worth it,” he said disgustedly. “Anyway, I got a new car on order from Marty Zilliber and all the robber’d allow me on a trade-in was a hundred twenty-five. Hundred twenty-five! I said sure it’s gone a hundred and thirty-two thousand miles, Marty, but I only had a ring job and complete overhaul done at the hundred thousand mark, the rubber’s in good condition, seems to me it’s worth more than a hundred twenty-five, book or no book. But that’s all he’d give me on the trade. So I guess the hell with it. Let the insurance company worry about it. If they want to spend a couple hundred dollars for a dredge and wrecker...”

He had apparently forgotten all about his aunt.

Johnny lay down flat on his stomach with his head over the tailboard and was sick all over the road. The Judge held onto his legs, looking away.

The rain stopped and the late afternoon sun came out just as they passed old man Lemmon’s hovel on Holy Hill.

Hubert Hemus’s car was parked just beyond the Adams house, before the church. The prisoner, Burney Hackett, the three Hemus men were nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?” demanded Judge Shinn, pushing through the crowd of women and children at the church gate. “What did they do with him?”

“Don’t you worry, Judge, he’s safe,” said Millie Pangman. The sun flashed off her gold eyeglasses. “They’re fixin’ up the coalbin in the church cellar as a jail. He won’t get away!”

“Too good for him, I say,” bellowed Rebecca Hemus. “Too good for him!”

“And that Elizabeth Sheare runnin’ to make him a cup of tea,” said Emily Berry venomously. “Tea! Poison’s what I’d give him. And gettin’ him dry clothes, like the church was a hotel. Peter Berry, you get on home and take those wet things off!”

“Wouldn’t it be better if you all went home?” asked the Judge evenly. “This is no place for women and children.”

“What did he say?” shouted old Selina Hackett. “Who went home? At a time like this!”

“We have as much right here as you men, Judge,” said Prue Plummer sharply. “Nobody’s going to budge till that murdering foreigner gets what’s coming to him. Do you realize it was only by the grace of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost that I wasn’t the one he murdered? How many times I told Aunt Fanny, ‘Don’t take in every dirty stranger who comes scraping at your kitchen door,’ I told her. ‘Some day,’ I said, ‘some day, Aunt Fanny, you’ll let in the wrong one.’ The poor dear wouldn’t ever listen. And now look at her!”

Mathilda Scott said in a low voice, “I’d like to get my hands on him. Once, just once.”

Judge Shinn looked at her as if he had never seen her before.

Hackett and the Hemuses appeared on the church steps. As the Judge led the way through the group of women and children to meet them, Johnny noticed Mert Isbel’s daughter Sarah and her child hanging about the edge of the crowd. The woman’s face was lively. But the liveliness died as her father pushed by her. She drew away, gripping her little girl’s hand.

“Burney, what’s the meaning of this?” cried Judge Shinn. “Locking him in a coalbin!”

“Got no jail to lock him in, Judge,” said the constable.

“He shouldn’t be here at all! Have you notified Coroner Barn-well yet?”

“I got to talk that over with Doc Cushman. Doc’s waitin’ for us over at Aunt Fanny’s.”

“All Dr. Cushman can legally do is bring in a finding that death was caused by a criminal act, and report that finding at once to Coroner Barnwell in Cudbury. From that point on, the case is in Barnwell’s hands. He will either summon a coroner’s jury of six electors—”

“Judge.” Hubert Hemus’s gaunt face was granite, only the jaws moving, like millstones grinding away at the words to come. “For ninety-one years Fanny Adams belonged to the town. This is town business. Ain’t nobody goin’ to tell us how to run town business. Now you’re an important judge and you know the law and how things ought to be done, and we’ll be obliged for your advice as a judge and a neighbor. We’ll let Coroner Barnwell come down here and make his findin’s. If he wants a coroner’s jury, why, we got six qualified electors right here. We’ll do everythin’ legal. Ain’t nobody goin’ to deprive this murderin’ furrin trash of his legal rights. He’ll have his lawyer and he’ll have his chance to defend himself. But he ain’t leavin’ Shinn Corners, no matter what.”

A murmur formed behind them like an oncoming wave. The sound tickled Johnny’s scalp. He fought down another attack of nausea.

Hube Hemus’s cheerless glance went out over his neighbors. “We got to get this organized, neighbors,” the First Selectman said. “Got to set a day and night guard over the prisoner. Got to set guards against outside meddlin’. Got to see that the milkin’s done — we’re a full hour late now! — got lots to do. Right now I b’lieve the big boys better get on home and attend to the cows. Mert, you can send Calvin Waters back in your wagon with Sarah and the child to do your milkin’; we need you here. We men stay and figger out what we got to do. The women with small children can take ’em home, give ’em somethin’ to eat, and put ’em to bed. Bigger children can watch over ’em. The women can get together and fix a community supper...”

Somehow, the Judge and Johnny found themselves shut off. They stood about on the periphery, watching and listening, but groups fell silent and drifted apart at their approach.

“It must be me,” Johnny said to the Judge. “Shinn or no Shinn, I’m an outsider. Wouldn’t it make it easier all around, Judge, if I packed and got out?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” said the Judge scornfully.

“What do you mean?” said Johnny.

The Judge looked suddenly quite old. “Nothing. Nothing, Johnny. It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. I’ve sat on the bench in Cudbury for too many years to be en rapport with Shinn Corners. Hube Hemus has passed the word around.”

It was from Ferriss Adams that they learned what had happened in the cellar of the church when the prisoner was brought down to the coalbin. Adams had the story from Samuel Sheare, whom he had sought out to discuss arrangements for Fanny Adams’s funeral. Mr. Sheare had been present in the cellar; he had insisted on providing the prisoner with dry clothing — the man’s teeth were clacking from immersion and chill. When he brought the clothing, the minister had asked Constable Hackett and the Hemuses to leave him alone with the prisoner; they had refused and ordered the man to strip. Either he misunderstood or he understood too well — doubled over in agony still, the man had resisted furiously. The Hemus twins had torn the clothes from his body.

In his jacket Burney Hackett found a paper identifying him as one Josef Kowalczyk — “Mr. Sheare spelled it for me,” Ferriss Adams said, “it ends in c-z-y-k, which Mr. Sheare says the fellow pronounces ‘chick’” — aged forty-two, a Polish immigrant admitted to the United States under a special refugee quota in 1947. They had also found, in a dirty knotted handkerchief tied to a rope slung around Kowalczyk’s naked waist, a hundred and twenty-four dollars.

“And that’s the clincher,” snapped the Cudbury lawyer. “Because Mr. Sheare says that yesterday, at Aunt Fanny’s open house, she took him into her kitchen for a private talk. She told him she’d noticed Elizabeth Sheare’s summer dresses were pretty shabby, and she wanted him to buy his wife a new one. She reached up to the top shelf of her old pine cabinet, where she’s always kept her row of spice jars, and she took down the cinnamon jar. There was some change in it and a roll of bills, When Mr. Sheare protested, Aunt Fanny said to him, ‘Don’t ye worry none about my runnin’ short, Mr. Sheare. You know I keep some cash here for emergencies. There’s a hundred and forty-nine dollars and change in this jar, and if I can’t give Elizabeth Sheare a new dress out of it without her knowin’, what in the land’s sake can I do with it?’ And she peeled off two tens and a five and pressed them into Mr. Sheare’s hand. A hundred and forty-nine dollars in Aunt Fanny’s cinnamon bank only the day before,” said Ferriss Adams, “she gave twenty-five of it to Samuel Sheare, there’s nothing left in Aunt Fanny’s cinnamon jar — they’ve already checked that — and here’s a hundred and twenty-four dollars hidden under Kowalczyk’s undershirt... smelling of cinnamon. It’s what the Judge and I as lawyers, Mr. Shinn,” said Adams dryly, “call circumstantial evidence, but I’d say those are pretty damning circumstances. Wouldn’t you, Judge?”

“As presumptive of theft, Ferriss, yes,” said the Judge.

“Judge, he’s guilty as hell and you know it!”

“Not legally, I don’t. Ferriss, are you staying around the village this evening?”

“I’ll have to. I’ve got to see about the undertaking arrangements. As soon as the coroner gets here and gives us a release — it’ll have to be tonight! — I’m having Cy Moody of Comfort pick up the body. Why, Judge?”

“Because, Ferriss,” said Judge Shinn slowly, “I don’t like one little bit what’s going on. I’ve got to appeal to you as a practicing lawyer sworn to uphold the laws of the state to disregard your personal feelings, Ferriss, and help me stop... whatever’s brewing. As Fanny Adams’s kin you ought to be able to exercise some sobering influence on these upset people. Tonight may be crucial, Ferriss. I’ll stay out of the way. Will you try to talk them into handing Kowalczyk over to the sheriff or the state police?”

“Hube Hemus is the man,” muttered the Cudbury lawyer. “The tail that wags your wacky community. Why is Hube acting so God-Almighty, Judge? What’s Hube’s beef?”

“It’s compounded of many things, Ferriss. But principally, I think, the murder of his brother Laban before the war.”

“The Gonzoli case! I’d clean forgot about that. Cudbury jury acquitted him, didn’t it? Then I’m afraid, Judge,” said Adams, shaking his head, “you’re asking for the impossible.”

“Do your best, Ferriss.” The Judge squeezed Adams’s arm and turned away. He was shivering.

“I think, your honor,” said Johnny, “I’d better get you into your house before you go off on a pneumonia kick. Did you ever get a Japanese rubdown? March!”

But the Judge did not smile.

They sat on the Shinn porch that night and watched the arrival of Coroner Barnwell. They watched the coroner’s excited gestures, the eddy of villagers, the arrival of the Comfort undertaker’s truck, the departure of Fanny Adams’s remains. With the crickets shrilling, the peepers roaring, the mosquitoes humming, the millers and beetles cracking against Shinn Corners’s sole street light, outside Peter Berry’s store, the weird performance on the village streets that night was played to fitting music. Through it all the Hemus twins flitted about the church grounds like spirits of darkness, each armed with a shotgun. One patrolled the front yard of the church, the other guarded the rear.

When, at ten o’clock, the Cudbury County coroner strode from the Town Hall to the intersection and began to cross Shinn Road to his parked car, Judge Shinn called softly.

“Barnwell, come up here a moment.”

The heavy figure looked startled. Barnwell hurried over the green and across the Judge’s lawn. “I thought they’d strung you up or something, Judge Shinn! What the devil’s come over this one-horse agglomeration of two-footed he- and she-asses?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Sit down, Barnwell. By the way, meet a young cousin of mine, John Shinn.”

“Heard the Judge had a long-lost relative floating around town.” Coroner Barnwell groped for Johnny’s hand and wrung it. “Fine mess you’ve stepped into. Judge, what’s going on in Shinn Corners? Do you know they won’t give up this fellow Kowalczyk? Won’t give him up!” The coroner sounded baffled. “Why?”

“I’m afraid there are a great many reasons, all pretty complicated,” sighed Judge Shinn, “but the only fact that need concern us at the moment, Barnwell, is the fact of their refusal. What happened over at Town Hall? Did you have a coroner’s jury?”

“Yes, and they brought in a perfectly proper finding from the testimony and evidence. Kowalczyk obviously must be held for arraignment. But then they handed me my hat and politely asked me to get the hell out of Shinn Corners. I’m still flabbergasted. Of course, I’ll run these local yokels of yours clean back to their primitive privies as soon as I can get some cops down here—”

“That’s exactly what I wish you wouldn’t do, Barnwell. Not right away, anyway.”

“Why not?” The coroner was astonished.

“Because there’ll be a heap of trouble.”

“Who cares!” said Barnwell violently.

“I care,” said the Judge. “And so, I think, Barnwell, will you. I’m not exaggerating the danger. There’s real trouble ahead. Ask an outsider’s opinion. Johnny’s an ex-Intelligence officer, a trouble-shooter of experience! Johnny, what do you think?”

“I think,” said Johnny, “that to bring armed men into this village in its present frame of mind — any armed men, Coroner Barnwell — is to invite a nastier mess than anything New England’s seen since Daniel Shays’s rebellion.”

“Well, I swan to Marthy,” said Barnwell sardonically, “I do believe you two picklepusses are serious. I’ll tell you, Judge. I’ve got my duty, too, though it’s hardly my place to remind you of it, since in our beloved state county coroners are appointed by the judges of the Superior Court, on whose altitudinous bench you’ve parked your fanny with such distinction for so long. In other words, Judge, you share the awful responsibility of my appointment. Consequently, you have a vested ethical interest in seeing that I carry out my duties faithfully and to the last jot and tittle of the law. My duty is to secure custody of the accused, Josef Kowalczyk, and see him lodged in the sacred precincts of our county jail, where the sonofabitch belongs. I’m not going to do it personally; I’m far too sinister for that. Me, I’m going to toss this squishy little old punkin into the mitts of those whose duty in turn it is to assist me in performing mine — to wit, the police power. Rebellion!” Barnwell tramped off the porch, snickering. “Go to bed and sleep it off,” he called back; and he drove off up Shinn Road towards Cudbury with a flirt of his exhaust.

After Barnwell’s departure, the Judge and Johnny went back to their silent watch. They saw the villagers emerge from the Town Hall, straggle up Four Corners Road, stand about the intersection, disperse, regroup. They heard arrangements discussed for the milking and other farm activities that had to go on. Chores were to be taken care of on a communal basis, by women as well as men; cars and weapons were to be pooled. So-and-So was to tend the stock at the Pangman barn, this boy was to relieve Calvin Waters at the Isbel farm, that one was to run over to the Scotts’ while Drakeley was on duty in the village. They saw Ferriss Adams let into the Adams house by Burney Hackett, and old Merton Isbel being given a gun to patrol the Adams property. They saw Hube Hemus and Orville Pangman relieve Tommy and Dave Hemus on the church grounds, and the twins roar down Shinn Road past the Shinn porch in their father’s car, presumably to go home for a few hours’ sleep. Plans were made for regular four-hour watches, with each man and ablebodied boy of Shinn Corners assigned his place and time. Older children of the immediate vicinity, like Dickie Berry and Cynthia Hackett, ran here and there on mysterious errands. Kitchens were lit up until past midnight, as Millie Pangman and Prue Plummer and Emily Berry busied themselves making sandwiches and pots of coffee.

But at last the lights blinked out, the Corners emptied, the children disappeared, the town settled down. Except for the street lamp on Berry’s corner and the floodlight illuminating the church grounds, Shinn Corners was in darkness. The only sounds were the sounds of the insects, an occasional faint bark from the Scotts’ dog far down Four Corners Road, and the tread of the farmer sentries.

“Incredible,” said Johnny.

“What?” The Judge started.

“I said all this strikes me as unbelievable,” Johnny said. “For the first time I begin to grasp Lexington and Concord and the Boston Tea Party. How can people get so worked up over anything?”

“They believe in something,” said the Judge.

“To this extent?” Johnny laughed.

“It shows they’re alive, at any rate.”

“I’m alive,” argued Johnny. “But I’ve got more sense than to stick my neck out. For what? The old lady, God rest her soul, is dead; nothing’s going to bring her back. Why get into a hassle?”

Judge Shinn’s rocker creaked. “Are you referring to me, or to them, Johnny?”

“To both of you.”

“Let me tell you something about people like us,” said the Judge. “You have to go back a lot further than 1776. You have to go back more than three centuries to when the Puritan nature was molding itself to the rough shape of the new England. To Miles Standish, for instance, under orders by the Pilgrim Fathers to destroy the Mount Wollaston settlement and kick out Thomas Morton because of his uninhibited life and his success at Indian trading — moral issues and economics, you see, the Holy Book and the Pocketbook, in defense of either or both of which the good Puritan more or less cheerfully risked his life. Or to the John Endecott expedition against the Pequot Indians in reprisal for the murder of John Oldham, a simple exercise in revenge against the benighted heathen furriners — well, their skin color was different and they spoke English with an accent when they spoke it at all, which amounted to the same thing. As I recall it, they followed that up by wiping out the main Pequot settlement and massacring every big and little Pequot they could find. The Puritan is a mighty stubborn citizen when aroused.”

“In other words,” Johnny grinned in the darkness, “they were swine.”

“They were people. People with beliefs, some right and some wrong. More important — they did something, rightly or wrongly, about their beliefs.” The rocker stopped creaking. “Johnny, what do you believe in?”

In the darkness Johnny felt the old man’s eyes groping for him.

“Nothing, I guess.”

“A man has to believe in something, Johnny.”

“I’m not a man, I’m a vegetable,” laughed Johnny.

“So you’re vegetating.”

“It follows, doesn’t it?” Johnny suddenly felt too tired to talk. “I used to believe in a great deal.”

“Of course you did—”

“It was painful.”

“Yes,” said the Judge dryly.

“I even did something about my beliefs. I lapped up all the noble sludge, shipped out to be a hero. I knew what I was fighting for. You betcha. Democracy. Freedom. Down with the tyrants. One world. Man, those were the days. Remember?”

“I remember,” said the Judge.

“So do I,” said Johnny. “I wish I didn’t. Remembering is the worst pain of all. The trouble is, I’m not a successful vegetable. I’m not a successful anything. That bothers me a little. It would be nice just rooting in the sun, performing my little photosynthesis for the day, watching the animal life go by. But I’m like the rose in a story I read by Roald Dahl. When it was cut, it shrieked.”

“Go on,” said the Judge.

“You like to listen to this stuff?” Johnny lit a cigaret; the flame trembled, and he snuffed it out quickly. “All right, I will. I think the first hint I got that I was going to be the missing link between the fauna and the flora came to me when I saw Hiroshima. Know anything about real fear, Judge? It’s the only hell there is. Hiroshima was hell on earth. Hell is a man’s shadow printed on the side of a building. It’s a radioactive bloodstream. It’s a kid with his bones lit up like a Christmas tree. There’s nothing in Dante that comes within a million miles of it.”

Johnny smiled his queer smile in the warmth of the night. “So I came home. I felt out of sorts... out of touch with business-as-usual, but I put that down to the labor pains of readjustment. I really tried. I tried sitting in a law class again. I tried watching movies and TV commercials. I tried to understand prices going up and industry blaming it on labor and labor blaming it on industry. I tried to understand the UN. The one thing I didn’t try was Communism. I never fell for that crap. Some of the men did — I knew a fighter pilot who’d flown fifty-nine missions and came back and after a while joined the party, said there had to be hope somewhere. I was denied even that. I began to realize that there was no hope anywhere, at all. Then Korea. Am I boring you?

“No,” said Judge Shinn. “No.”

“Korea, God help us,” said Johnny. “I was no hero that time. I just wanted to get back into something I knew. And all the time I was keeping my eye on what was going on outside that pustulated pimple on the hide of Asia. I saw nothing that stirred me in the direction of the fauna. Quite the contrary. And when it was all ‘over’ — as if it’s over! — the hopelessness simply shifted from one phase into another. But it was the same damned thing. More TV commercials. More gripes about taxes. More politicians promising better protection for less dough. And more speeches at the UN. And — always — bigger and better bombs.

“I’m not being emotional about this,” said Johnny. “I dream some, but I manage to sleep... You take this Commie business. Suppose there were no Commies. There’d still be Africa, India, China — there’d still be Spain and Germany, and the Arabs, and the Peronistas — there’d still be a world full of poverty, hate, ambition, greed. There’d still be atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, nerve gas. And there’d still be the book burners and the witch hunters and the doubletalkers. About the only note of reassurance the brass keep sounding is that we’ve got all of three years left before the bombs start falling... So what do you want me to do, Judge — find a job, get married, have kids, buy a house, water a lawn, save up for Junior’s college and my old age? What for?”

The Judge was silent.

Johnny said apologetically, “Well, you asked me. Mind if I hit the sack?”

He went into the house and climbed the polished stairway to his musty bedroom to try out Coroner Barnwell’s parting advice.

After a long time, Judge Shinn followed.

Johnny was awakened from his dream by the church bell. His first drowsy thought was, What a nice way to be reminded that I promised myself to attend Mr. Sheare’s service Sunday morning. But as his senses sharpened it seemed to him the reminder was too insistent. The old bell, with its flat and cracked clang, was pealing away like a 1900 fire alarm.

He rolled out of bed and went to a window.

The people were running toward their church from all directions. He saw Burney Hackett burst out of his house on the south corner, struggling to get into his Sunday jacket and hold on to his gun at the same time. Peter Berry came lumbering up Four Corners Road from his house behind the store as if a bull were after him. Children were darting everywhere, surrounded by wildly barking dogs. The Pangmans and Prue Plummer were trotting down the middle of Shinn Road, urging one another on. Two cars shot up to the north corner, one from the south and the other from the west, almost colliding at the intersection. One deposited Dave Hemus, Merton Isbel, and Calvin Waters, the other Drakeley Scott and his mother. A group was already waiting before the church; Johnny saw Samuel Sheare and his stout wife hurrying across the lawn from the parsonage, their faces unnaturally white.

Then Judge Shinn pounded on his door.

“Johnny, get up!”

“What’s happening?”

“Someone was posted out beyond Comfort, near the Petunxit police barracks. Just phoned a warning in. The state police are on their way over. Damn Barnwell!”

Johnny threw on his clothes and scuttled downstairs.

They were all congregated now — every man, woman, and child of the village except the Scott invalids and the hermit of Holy Hill. The women and children huddled on the steps of the church. The men and older boys were deployed in a loose arc formation before them, covering the approach to the church and the drive on its east side where the cellar windows were. Judge Shinn and Mr. Sheare were talking earnestly to Hubert Hemus and Burney Hackett. Ferriss Adams paced nearby, nibbling his fingernails.

Johnny got across to the north corner just as two state police cars and a private car came up Shinn Road from the direction of Comfort at a leisurely gait. They slowed down at the intersection and fanned out a little; then they stopped. Both police cars were full; the passenger car held one man.

The driver of the passenger car, a big stout man in a blue-striped seersucker suit and a new straw hat, got slowly out and stood in the road. He took off his hat and wiped his half-bald head with a big blue polka-dot handkerchief. Large halfmoons of sweat darkened his jacket below the armpits. He kept glancing from the silent crowd before the church to one of the police cars.

Finally a uniformed man joined him. He was sandy-haired, with a red hard face. He wore the insignia of a captain of state police. A gun was holstered at his hip; the flap of the holster was buttoned.

The other police remained in the cars.

The police captain and the stout civilian walked slowly toward the church in the bright sunshine.

Johnny remained where he was. He leaned against the horse trough. But only for a moment. Curiosity made him move again. He crossed over the curve of path that separated the north corner from the church lawn. He stopped near the Sheares.

The troopers had their heads out the car windows, watching in silence.

The police officer and the civilian went up the church walk side by side, very slowly now. They stopped altogether about ten feet from the line of armed men.

“Mornin’, Judge Shinn. Mornin’, folks,” said the stout man. “Heard the terrible news, thought I’d stop by with Captain Frisbee to see what we could do.”

“This is Sheriff Mothless of Cudbury County,” said the Judge. “Constable Burney Hackett, Hubert Hemus, Merton Isbel, Peter Berry, Orville Pangman... Glad to see you, Captain Frisbee. Shake hands with my neighbors.”

The policeman and the sheriff hesitated. Then they came forward and shook hands all around.

“And this is Mr. Ferriss Adams, Fanny Adams’s grand-nephew,” said the Judge. “I think you know the sheriff, Feriss...

The Cudbury lawyer shook the fat hand silently.

“Can’t tell you what a shock it’s been, Mr. Adams,” said Sheriff Mothless, wiping his head again. “Never had the pleasure of meetin’ that grand old lady, but we’ve always been mighty proud of her in this county, mighty proud. Great credit to her town, state, and country. Famous artist, they say. Captain Frisbee and me just stopped down Comfort way at Cy Moody’s parlors and took a real good look at her. Ter’ble. Brutal. I tell you, it like to made my blood boil. Man who’d commit a murder like that don’t deserve any more mercy than a mad yellow dog. And by goshamighty, I’m goin’ to see he gets what’s comin’ to him! And damn quick! Right, Captain Frisbee?”

“No need for you folks to fret any more about him,” said the state policeman. “We’ll take him right off your hands.”

He stopped expectantly.

Nobody moved.

Sheriff Mothless wiped his forehead once more. “Hear you got him locked up in the church cellar,” he said. “Fine work, neighbors! Leaves us nothin’ to do but go on down there, yank him out, and shoot him straight over to the county jail. Easiest manhunt I ever heard of. Hey, Captain?”

“I sure appreciate the help,” said Captain Frisbee. “Well.” He glanced over his shoulder at the police cars, but Sheriff Mothless nudged him, and the policeman turned back.

“Well, it’s gettin’ on,” the sheriff said, glancing at his wrist-watch. “I expect you folks’ll be wantin’ to get into church. So if you’ll all kindly step to one side while Captain Frisbee’s men haul that skunk up out o’ there...”

The sheriff’s heavy voice dribbled off. Not a man or woman had stirred.

Captain Frisbee glanced over his shoulder again, a little impatiently.

“Just a moment, please!” Judge Shinn nudged Ferriss Adams forward.

The Cudbury lawyer faced the villagers with respectful friendliness, as if they were a jury. “Neighbors,” he said, “you all know me. I’ve been coming into Shinn Corners on and off for forty years, since the days when my Aunt Fanny jiggled me on her knee. So I don’t have to tell you there’s nobody in this town wants to see this Kowalczyk, or whatever his name is, pay the penalty for his crime quicker than I do. I’m asking you good folks to hand him over to these officers of the law so they can throw him into one of those escape-proof cells we’ve got in that fine modern county jail in Cudbury. Step aside and let this officer do his duty.”

From the crowd of women in the church doorway came the voice of Rebecca Hemus, a shrill challenge. “So a Cudbury jury can let him go, the way they let that Joe Gonzoli go when he murdered my brother-in-law Laban?”

“But that was a case of self-defense,” protested Adams.

Hubert Hemus said, “He ain’t gettin’ out of our jurisdiction, Mr. Adams, and that’s that.”

Judge Shinn touched Adams’s arm. The lawyer stepped back, shrugging.

“That’s fine talk from the First Selectman,” said the Judge. “For twenty years and more, Hube Hemus, Shinn Corners has looked to you for counsel and leadership. How do you expect your children — all these children — to grow up respecting law and order when you set such a poor example?”

Hemus shifted his rifle suddenly and spat. “Seems to me you got it wrong, Judge,” he said in a mild voice. “It’s law and order we’re upholdin’. Aunt Fanny Adams was one of us — born here, growed up here, married here, buried her husband Girshom and her children here, did all that paintin’ that made her famous here, and she died here. We’re a community. We take care of our own. Our law enforcement officer arrested Aunt Fanny’s murderer, a coroner’s jury of our electors brought in a findin’, and we aim to follow right through as our just due. We don’t need no outside help, didn’t ask for none, don’t want none. That’s all there is to it, Judge. Now I’m goin’ to ask you, Sheriff, and you, Captain Frisbee, to kindly get on out of Shinn Corners and take your men with you. We got to go to church service.”

“Do you talk about church, Hube Hemus?” cried Samuel Sheare. “Where’s your humility? Have you no shame, carryin’ a gun on the Lord’s day, incitin’ your neighbors to do the same — yes, even to the steps of the house of the Lord’s congregation? And defyin’ the mandate of the law, in the persons of these men who are only doin’ their sworn duty? You’re the instigator and ringleader, Hubert Hemus. Come back to your senses. Talk your neighbors into comin’ back to theirs!”

Hube Hemus said gently, “We had a town meetin’ last night, Mr. Sheare. You were there. You know this matter was voted on in the manner prescribed by town regulations, and minutes were duly taken of the proceedin’s. You know nobody had to talk nobody into nothin’. You know there wasn’t a single nay vote on the motion exceptin’ yours and Mrs. Sheare’s.”

The minister looked over his congregation, at those whose dead he had buried, whose sick he had comforted, whose troubled he had given faith — at the brides and the grooms, the mothers and the fathers, at the children he had received into his church. And everywhere he looked, the familiar faces were rock, implacable.

Mr. Sheare made a small gesture of despair and turned away.

“I’m saying it again,” said Hube Hemus to the sheriff and the policeman. “Go away and leave us to our own.”

Sheriff Mothless jammed his straw hat over his ears. “What is this, a dime-store revolution? Shinn Corners secedin’ from the forty-eight states? You folks stop this time-wastin’ tomfoolery and stand aside! Captain Frisbee, do your duty!”

The captain nodded at the two police cars. Ten troopers climbed down into the road. They shuffled to form a line. Then they came slowly up from the north corner and turned into the church walk, feeling their holsters.

The thin arc of village men and boys began to finger their guns.

Johnny watched, fascinated.

“Stop right there, please!” Judge Shinn’s voice cracked out like a rifle shot. The advancing troopers glanced at their captain; he nodded, and they halted. The Judge turned to his fellow townsmen. “May I say something more? This is the United States of America, neighbors, one of the few places left on earth where men live by just laws, or try to, and where the law is the same for all. I told you only Friday on the green there what some men are trying to do in our country, how they are undermining the legal structure that protects the principle of equal justice for all, what a catastrophe this could be if it isn’t put a stop to. Yet what do I find less than forty-eight hours later? My own neighbors proposing to commit the same criminal folly!

“One of the keystones of our system of law is the protection of the rights of accused persons. We proudly guarantee that every person charged with a crime — no matter who he is, no matter how sickening his offense — that every such person get a fair trial, in a court of competent jurisdiction, before a jury of responsible citizens, with open minds, so that they may weigh the facts of the case without prejudice and arrive at a just decision.

“Now,” said the Judge, “we have a murder case on our hands. Hube, Orville, Burney, Peter, Mert, all of you — can you provide a court of competent jurisdiction? No. The laws of our state specifically designate the Superior Court as the court of jurisdiction in serious criminal cases, with certain exceptions such as the counties having Courts of Common Pleas, of which Cudbury County is not one. True, we have a trial justice, in common with all small communities in our state that lack a town court; and you, Orville Pangman, are the justice of the peace by town election. But if you’ve read the laws regulating your office, Orville, you know that a case as serious as a murder is not within your jurisdiction, that the accused must be bound over to the next term of the Superior Court or, where such courts are provided for, the court of Common Pleas.

“And do you think — Hube, Orville, Burn, Peter, Merton, all of you,” cried the Judge, “that this accused, Josef Kowalczyk, can get a fair trial in Shinn Corners? Is there one man or woman within range of my voice who is without prejudice in this case? Is there one of you who hasn’t already made up his mind that this man Kowalczyk is guilty of the murder of Fanny Adams?”

Johnny thought, You may as well try arguing with the stones in the cemetery there.

“Well?” demanded Judge Shinn. “Answer me!”

And again Hube Hemus spoke out of his gaunt inflexibility. “Fairness works two ways, Judge. He’ll get as fair a trial in Shinn Corners as Joe Gonzoli got in Cudbury. We want justice, too.” He was silent; then, with his first show of defiance, he added, “Maybe we can’t trust nobody but ourselves no more. Maybe that’s it, Judge. Anyway, we voted it that way, and that’s the way it’s goin’ to be.”

Captain Frisbee said instantly, “All right, men.”

Sheriff Mothless hopped aside.

The troopers moved forward in a sort of drift, as if they felt everything was in delicate balance and must not be weighted down on their side by so much as a heavy footfall. The men and boys watched them coming, the boys a little pale but with half-grins, the men’s mouths flattening.

Hube Hemus brought his gun up.

The sun flashed along the whole steel barrier.

The troopers halted.

Captain Frisbee looked astounded. Then his red face went redder. “I ask you people to get out of our way. If you don’t, we’ve got to come through anyway. There’s nothing we can do about it. The choice is yours.”

“Don’t force the issue, Captain.” Hube Hemus’s jaws ground. “We’d have to shoot.”

The guns steadied.

The police officer hesitated. The hands of his troopers hovered over their holsters. They were watching him uneasily.

“Judge, please step out of the way,” said Captain Frisbee in a low voice. “I ask the minister there to do the same.”

Neither Judge Shinn nor Samuel Sheare obeyed. The little minister’s hands fluttered; that was all.

“I not only ask you to step aside,” snapped the officer, “but if there’s anything you can say to get those women and children away from the doorway you’d better say it now. A lot of people are going to get hurt. I call you to witness that I’m not responsible if—”

“Wait,” said the Judge in a gritty voice. “Will you wait? Give me ten minutes, Captain, just ten minutes.”

“For what?” said Captain Frisbee. “These people, Judge, are plain loony. Or they’re bluffing, which is more likely. Either way—”

A nervous trooper jerked out his revolver and lunged.

There was a shot.

Johnny thought, This is one of those dreams.

The revolver flew out of the trooper’s hand and thudded to the grass beside the walk. The trooper cried out and stared at his hand. Blood was welling from a long crease across the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger.

Smoke snaked out of Hube Hemus’s gun.

“I warned ye. Next time it’s through the heart.”

Judge Shinn jumped up and down like a marionette, waving his arms. “For God’s sake, Captain, ten minutes!” he shouted. “Don’t you realize yet what you’ve stepped into? Do you want a blood bath on your conscience? Women and children victims as well as yourselves and these mules? I want a chance to phone the Governor!”

Captain Frisbee said in a murderous voice, “Grady, take Ames over to the car and fix up that flesh wound. The rest of you stay where you are. Hollister, take over till I get back.” He nodded bitterly to Judge Shinn. “Lead the way.”

Johnny trailed them across the road to the Shinn house. The Judge sat down in the foyer beside the telephone, wiped his face and hands with a handkerchief carefully. Then he picked up the phone.

“Operator, this is an emergency call. I want to speak to Governor Bradley Ford in the state capital. Governor Ford is either at the Executive Mansion or somewhere in the Capitol Building. I must speak to him in person. This is Superior Court Judge Lewis Shinn calling.”

As he waited, the Judge wiped his ear and the earpiece of the receiver. The foyer was cool, quiet. The sun, still in the eastern sky, streamed in through the screen door. A horsefly crawled and buzzed on the screen, black against the light. The red of Captain Frisbee’s face was so deep it was alarming.

Johnny found his pulse throbbing. He made the discovery with some surprise.

“Governor Ford?” said Judge Shinn. Then he said through his teeth, “No, damn it, I want the Governor himself! Put him on!” He wiped his mouth this time.

There was no sound from outdoors at all. Through the screen door Johnny could see the whole tableau before the church. It had not changed. He had the absurd feeling that it would remain fixed that way in time and space, like a photograph.

“Governor? Judge Lewis Shinn,” said the Judge rapidly. “No, I’m calling from my home in Shinn Corners. Governor, Fanny Adams was murdered here yesterday afternoon — yes, Aunt Fanny Adams. I know — I know you haven’t heard about it, Governor. Governor, listen — Governor, a man has been caught by our constable and a posse of the townspeople. He’s an itinerant of Polish origin and speaks very little English. There is circumstantial evidence that he may have been the murderer. No, wait! Our people have locked him in the cellar of the church and refuse to give him up. That’s right, Governor, they insist on retaining custody of the suspect and trying him themselves — I know they can’t, Governor Ford, but they say they’re going to just the same! At this moment a detail of state police under command of Captain Frisbee of the Petunxit barracks is facing almost the entire male population of Shinn Corners before the church. And they’re all armed. No, I mean the villagers are armed, Governor. In fact, one shot has already been fired... No, no, Governor, how would militia help the situation? It would only aggravate matters. That’s not why I’m calling... Talk to them! Governor, you don’t understand. I tell you if these troopers try to take the prisoner out of that church, blood will run in the streets. I might add that every woman and child in the village is in the direct line of the troopers’ fire and refuses to move. I know — I know, Governor, it is fantastic. But it’s also a fact — That’s exactly the point. There is something you can do, and that’s why I’m calling. First, I suggest you give Captain Frisbee the direct order — he’s standing by — to retire with his men. Sheriff Mothless of Cudbury County is here; he’s to get out, too. Secondly, and this is of vital importance, Governor, I want you to appoint me special judge in this case, authorized to hold a trial in Shinn Corners — Governor... Governor... No, wait. You don’t understand my purpose. Obviously any trial conducted here will be a travesty of justice. Legally speaking, it won’t be a trial at all. But it will pacify these people and get us past the critical period, which is my sole concern at the moment... If they find him guilty and insist—? Of course not, Governor! If it should come to such an extremity, I’ll notify you at once and you can send the state police in force, if necessary call out the National Guard... No, the status of the accused in my opinion wouldn’t change an iota, regardless of what they find. There will be so many errors of legal process — I’ll compound them! — so many statutory safeguards trampled on... That’s it, Governor. For the record you should make it clear that my request and your authorization constitute a ruse of convenience only, to avert bloodshed, and that they’re designed solely to allow tempers to cool down so the prisoner can be got safely away. Then he can be tried in the regular way in a court of proper jurisdiction— No, no, Governor, I don’t want the State’s Attorney of Cudbury County involved! For exactly the reason that he should be!... That’s right, Governor. That’s it — thank you. Oh, one thing more. Will you keep this quiet? The fewer know what’s happened the better. If word gets out and reporters start pouring in here... Yes, yes. Please instruct Captain Frisbee to that effect for himself, his men, and Sheriff Mothless. I’ll take care of the county coroner and the one or two others here who know— Yes, I’ll keep you informed... God bless you, Governor. Captain Frisbee’s right here.”

With the departure of the troopers and the sheriff everything softened into natural shapes and colors. The air lightened as if a gas had blown away and the people changed from stiff figures in a photograph to men and women and children.

Samuel Sheare turned away, his lips moving. His wife went up to him, putting her stout body between him and the danger that had passed.

The women chattered and scolded the children; the big boys elbowed one another, horsing around; the men grounded their weapons and looked sheepish. Only Hube Hemus did not change expression; if he felt a personal triumph, no sign of it appeared on his gaunt features.

Judge Shinn held up his hand, and after a moment, good-naturedly, they listened.

“With the consent and cooperation of the Governor of our state, neighbors, you are going to have your chance to demonstrate that Shinn Corners is as strong for protecting the rights of an accused murderer as you are for asserting your own. Governor Ford has just empowered me to conduct the trial of Josef Kowalczyk in Shinn Corners.”

They murmured their approval.

“I assume,” the Judge continued dryly, “you consider me qualified. But so that there will be no misunderstanding, will you signify that you consent to my sitting in this case, and that you will abide by my rulings without argument except as they are properly argued by prosecutor and defense counsel?”

“Let’s call a town meetin’,” said Burney Hackett.

“No need for that,” said Hube Hemus indulgently. “Trial’s got to have a judge, and a judge’s got his prescribed powers. All those in favor say aye!” There was a roar of ayes. “All those opposed motion carried. Go ahead, Judge.”

“Then I set the trial of Josef Kowalczyk as beginning Monday morning, the seventh day of July, at ten o’clock A.M. That’s tomorrow morning, late enough so the chores can be got out of the way. The place of the trial will be Aunt Fanny Adams’s house. We’ll all be more comfortable there, and we’ll have the additional advantage of being on the scene of the crime, so that exhibits need not be toted from one place to another. Is that agreeable to everyone?”

They were pleased. Johnny thought, Crafty old conniver. You’ve set it in the one place calculated to reassure them.

“The first thing we will do tomorrow morning,” the Judge went on, “is empanel a jury. The law states that the accused must be tried by a jury of his peers, consisting of twelve legal voters of good character, sound judgment, and fair education, aged at least twenty-five, plus an alternate in case one of the twelve takes sick or otherwise cannot continue as a juryman during the trial. There will have to be a bailiff to take charge of the prisoner and keep order in the courtroom, a clerk of the court to keep the record of the trial, a prosecutor, and a defense attorney. The accused will be given the opportunity to select his own counsel and, if he does so, you must abide by his choice. If he has no preference, the court will appoint counsel to defend him; and in that case, I shall have to call in a lawyer from outside at town expense. Is that understood?”

They looked at Hubert Hemus.

Hemus reflected. “Aya. He’s got to have his lawyer. But who’s goin’ to prosecute?”

“Good question, Hube,” said the Judge, still more dryly. “I’ll have a suggestion on that point at the proper time, one that I’m sure will meet with everyone’s approval.”

He looked around. “All qualified voters will be present in the living room of Aunt Fanny Adams’s house by a quarter of ten tomorrow morning. Court will convene at ten sharp. And now, neighbors, I think we’ve held up church long enough, don’t you, Mr. Sheare?”

The women and children trooped into the church. The men conferred in low tones; then Tommy and Dave Hemus were given instructions and came down off the steps to take posts before and behind the little white building, trailing their guns negligently. Eddie Pangman and Drakeley Scott hurried up the walk and out into Shinn Road. They halted in the middle of the intersection. Eddie Pangman faced east, in the direction of Cudbury; Drakeley Scott faced west, in the direction of Comfort. Both boys were in high spirits. They joked to each other over their shoulders.

The men of Shinn Corners stacked their guns carefully outside the church and went in to their Sunday worship.